I had just gotten home after a long day and I really needed to relax.
Well…….. I say “long day.” but what that really means is that I had to wear grown up adult clothes at work all day, then on top of that the Fates turned against me and I had to go grocery shopping AND to the Post Office on the same day! Which is just too cruel.
So I went home and I decided to take a super long bath, because that’s what adults do when they don’t drink or do meth, but they still need to unwind.
Fast-forward about 20 minutes, and I am in a state of near bliss as I relax from the harrowing saga of having to work AND run upwards of 2 errands! Well, as close to bliss as you can technically get in a bathtub that I only realized after I bought the house is DEFINITELY not shaped right!
But then I heard something…
Something rattly and startling, because there was nobody else in the house…
Because I live alone, which is why I left the bathroom door wide-freaking-open……
Because nobody else is supposed to be here.
Yet there was the noise, all creepy and groany like somebody was menacingly moving through the house!
So I tried some of that “logic” that people are always talking about and I told myself to stop being silly and to just relax, because all the exterior doors were locked and there was no way that somebody was creeping through my house. And I did in fact start to calm down…
…but then all that logic-bull-malarky went out the damn window when I remembered that article I read a few years ago about a tiny Asian woman who lived in a man’s cupboard for OVER A YEAR, and she would sneak out when he was asleep!!!!!
So by this point I was 100% assured that there was definitely somebody living in my upstairs attic, because that thing is super spacious and luxurious, and the door opens right into my loft.
And I tried to talk myself out of panicking by reminding myself that I specifically asked my house inspector a year ago to check for hobos in my attic and/or ways for hobos to get into my attic while we were doing the walk through. And I clearly remembered that “are you freaking serious” look he gave me when I asked, and so I told him the same story of the tiny Japanese woman, and so he checked again and reluctantly assured me that my attic was Asian-woman and hobo proof.
But still, I could hear the noises in the house, so I was pretty sure either:
- The hobos/vagrants/murderes/Asian ladies had found an entry point we had missed during the inspection
- Perhaps they were already living in the attic at the time of the inspection, but were just super good hiders, and they had in fact been living here with me FOR A YEAR!
- The inspector hates me and lied on the official document where I asked him to note the murderer-free-ness of the attic.
Now assured that there was most definitely somebody in my house slinking all slow and creepy like, I went into survival mode. My first thought was that I must have been silent for too long, so they’d assumed I wasn’t home and the coast was clear to come out and eat my food and watch my TV and water the plants (I’m not totally sure what live-in murderers do in the hours I’m at work). So in an effort to alert the surprisingly bold intruder that I was in fact home, I started splashing in the water.
My reasoning behind this was simply that they would realize I was home and take their cue to hide again. Then they could avoid being discovered, I could avoid being murdered, and we could both go back to the polite etiquette of ignoring each other’s existence.
But I kept hearing the noise, so I looked around for my phone to call for help, but it was out of reach on the bathroom floor. So I quietly called my puppy, who was posted at the bathroom door, and I said, “Willow, bring me the phone!”
…but she didn’t…
…because she’s an asshole.
So I armed myself with a plastic pink razor in one hand and a bar of soap in the other, and with the soap I tried to tap a message in morse code to the 2 guys who live in the unit on the other side of my wall. But the thing is, I don’t actually know morse code, so I really just tried to guess how many taps meant “MURDERER,” and I did that over and over.
But the sound was still coming, so I took the soap and wrote “REDRUM” on the bathtub wall, hoping that would be enough to make the police actually investigate and not just assume that I was drunk while bath-napping, because I TOTALLY WASN’T! (Unless there is alcohol in Pina Colada jelly beans, because that is most definitely what I had for dinner.)
But then I thought that maybe “REDRUM” wouldn’t be enough to spur an investigation, because there is weird shit like that all over my house. Plus the cops would definitely read this blog as part of the investigation, and lets face it: this entire blog is one long character reference that can and will be used against me one day in a court of law! So I grabbed the soap again and wrote: “Check the Japanese woman who lives in the attic!” on the tub wall, because I was pretty sure that would be just alarming enough to keep the investigation open.
And then I waited…
…and waited…
But nobody sprang into the bathroom to crazy-murder me, so I hopped out of the tub (as gracefully as you can when the tub is too small for a human person),
grabbed a towel and a bottle of Clorox spray as my weapon, and proceeded to check every cabinet/closet/pantry/attic in the house for a tiny Japanese women or other assorted murderers, but I didn’t find any. And then (just to be really, super sure) I nailed the attic door shut!
And at this point I was actually a little disappointed, because by the time your adrenaline gets to this point, it’s truly kind of a let down when nobody has the courtesy to pop out and at least TRY to attack you. It’s a smidge insulting, to be honest.
And then I heard the noise AGAIN!
And that’s when I realized that I’d left my ice maker running. My ice maker, which I usually turn off because it sounds like a caged demon when it kicks on every hour.
In other important news, there is nobody living in my attic.
…and this bath was not relaxing.
for a rainy day 